KABUL, APR 6: Najibullah Haqqani, the acting Minister of Telecommunications and Information Technology, in an exclusive interview with TOLOnews, announced the completion of a policy by his ministry to restrict or block Facebook in the country.

Haqqani stated that the country’s youth currently need education and should not be distracted by social networks.

The acting Minister of Telecommunications and Information Technology said: “Our youth are in a situation where they are academically weak and the majority of them are illiterate. Wasting their time and spending money on these things is to the benefit of the company and to the detriment of the nation. Hence, a policy has been created to restrict and block Facebook.”

Najibullah Haqqani also said that telecommunications networks during the previous government in the country paid the Islamic Emirate for the security of their sites. He stressed that in the previous system, they had the most governance over the geography of Afghanistan.

The acting Minister of Telecommunications and Information Technology added that efforts have been made to prevent cybercrimes in the country and a laboratory is also to be established in this area.

Najibullah Haqqani added, “We were providing security in those areas and we had facilitated the telecommunications networks to provide services. I don’t know what the previous system was getting out of their work.”

This interim government official also mentioned in the interview that they currently have 241 active systems in the tripartite security and education institutions and plan to create new systems for several other ministries in the near future.

He added: “A few months ago, our teams started working to survey all the ministry systems, collect their specifications, and then we will be able to connect all systems together.”

The acting Minister of Telecommunications and Information Technology emphasized that no one has the right to violate individuals’ privacy and only security institutions are permitted to access individuals’ locations for the purpose of preventing anti-security events and tracking criminals.